food sandwiched between hospital and home life

06/20/201806/19/2018

California Rolls

I was amazed at how simple these were to make in principle; I soon realised that to get them to look as perfect as they do at ROKA (our fave sushi joint) you need years of dedicated practice. Believe me though, when you make these healthy, rolls at home, you won’t mind the small imperfections one bit!

You’ll need a sushi mat for the rolls and a squeezy bottle like this to get a thin line of the chilli mayo; or wash and re-use an old one from some chilli sauce etc.

Ingredients

For the rice

200g Sushi rice

220g water for cooking

4 tablespoons of Japanese Rice Vinegar

2 tablespoons of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

For the fillings

2 sheets of dried seaweed (nori) cut each sheet into two pieces of equal size

Wash the rice until the water is clear. Add the rice to a pot and add the water (110g water for every 100g rice). Bring to the boil rapidly, then cover and reduce to a simmer for about 10mins (don’t lift the lid). Turn the heat off and leave it to steam with the lid on for a further 15mins.

Make the sushi vinegar by mixing the rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a small bowl until everything is dissolved.

Turn the rice out into a large enough bowl to give you some mixing space and slowly add about 4 tablespoons of the sushi vinegar mixing it in well before each addition. cover and set this aside. Don’t put it in the fridge as it will dry out and become hard

Make the chilli mayo by mixing some mayo and the sriracha together in a proportion that suits your taste! Spoon it into a squeezy bottle.

Make the rolls

Wrap the sushi mat in a few layers of clingfilm. Lay one of the halves of the nori on the mat. Make sure you orientate the mat so that it is rollable front to back so when you layer the sushi out you can roll it in the right direction!

Using wet hands, place a dollop of rice in the middle of the nori and spread it to 3 of the edges and leave one edge slightly uncovered. In the picture, I accidentally used a whole mat… I wouldn’t really do this again as they are very big rolls which are a bit hard to handle!

Add layers of ingredients lengthways across the rice from end to end. Something like, fish, pepper, carrot, avocado, cucumber etc…

Then lift the edge of the mat closest to you and begin to roll the sushi, tightening it as you go to form a tight roll.

You can repeat this but this time, spread the rice out on the mat first and then lay the nori on top of it so that the rice will be on the outside. make sure that the rice goes to all the edges of the seaweed and use the dull edge of the knife to keep the rice tight to the edge of the seaweed. Layer as before and roll tightly as before.

Carefully run a vegetable peeler blade down the cut edge of the avocado to get a thin slice which you can drape over the top of the join of the “rice on the outside sushi roll”. Squeeze a couple of thin layers of chili mayo along the length of the roll and sprinkle some crispy fried onions over the mayo.

Using a wet knife, slice the sushi into equal size discs and carefully arrange on a platter. Serve with the soy, wasabi and pickle.